Thursday, August 13, 2009

And the food debate rages on.....

I'm at this weird place where my ethics and beliefs about nutrition are at odds.

To me being vegan is ethical, good for the planet and for the most part very good for you. But there are a few things I'm not so jiggy with.There is a lot of weird uber processed vegan substitute stuff going around. fake meat, cheese, butter etc. You can even make a quiche out of tofu! While I am aware that it is not mandatory to eat such substitutes, they do make life easier. Also I'm wary of big amounts of soy. I have no issue with a little but if you substitute milk, eat tofu and have it in other stuff that can add up. My other issue is butter vs margarine. Margarine (even the vegan kind) is not food at all whare as butter, even with it's cow milky wierdness actually is. And I don't have an issue with eggs at all except for the cruelty in cage hens and that most "free range" eggs are not really that at all.

The goal for our diet is to eat lots and lots of unprocessed and homecooked, homemade food. Meat is a no brainer. Gross-it's out. But what of eggs? What if they came from my friends happy chooks? Or from a farm that I knew was ethical? I think I'd eat them. Certainly the kids and Luke will eat them. All vegan substitute stuff is out. No facon or cheeze. Minimal tofu and soy milk-definately not going back to cows milk. I do think that we are going to do unsalted organic butter and olive oil instead of margarine and dairy free spreads.

So I'm unveganizing myself. I'll probably still be a major pain in your ass when I come to your house though lol. I'll bring my own ;-)

3 comments:

I don't disagree with you healthwise and even though I am not vegan for health reasons in any way as I would do it even if it wasn't good for me, I don't really do the fake meat and cheese very often, just occasionally as I also do want to be healthy for completely separate reasons.

However, if you are concerned about the ethics, there is no such thing as cruelty-free eggs. Even if you purchase from a free-range (like real free-range, not the fake ones), organic, etc place, they are still crushing all the boys to death as they are not needed. The other aspect is that chickens naturally only produce around 10-12 eggs per year and those that are bred to produce a lot more are seriously nutritionally depleted because of it. So even if you were to have rescued hens, you should actually be feeding the eggs back to them to replace the lost nutrients rather than eating them yourself. Sanctuaries that rescue animals generally do this.

But then again, if your only consideration is health, that's a whole other story :)

I agree about processing Shae. I'm not vegetarian or vegan or even all organic atm, but I do have issues with highly processed foods that aren't actually foods IME. As well as how soy is processed. Someone said to me they only eat organic soy...not sure if that makes a difference or not.

Bin you've opened my eyes, that didn't even occur to me about organic eggs...we only eat free range organic eggs but there you go...food for thought so to speak

therein lies the rub for me Bin!Can my considerations really be both? I am ethically opposed to cruelty to animals but also I'm opposed to eating crap. It's MUCH easier for me than the kids. I can get away with being 95% eating no animals or their products but it's much harder to make those choices for the kids.